Feral hogs a danger for drivers

AUSTIN — Even before the fastest highway in the United States opened, collisions began. Feral hogs were on the move.

Police report at least four such wrecks on the 85 mile-per-hour stretch since traffic began flowing Oct. 24. Texas A&M University professor Billy Higginbotham offered a sympathetic ear when roadway managers called him weeks earlier about the pigs, which can top 400 pounds.

“They said, ‘We’ve already hit seven or eight pigs at a maximum speed of 45 mph, so what’s going to happen when people are driving 80 or 85,’” said Higginbotham, who has studied feral hogs for 25 years. Workers were testing the $1.3 billion part of State Highway 130, an Austin bypass for Dallas-San Antonio traffic, before opening it when the wrecks happened.

The threat posed by high-speed wrecks is just the latest wrinkle in a losing battle with the animals, first brought to the region by European colonists. Last year, state lawmakers authorized hunting wild pigs from helicopters. Caldwell County, which the road crosses, pays a $2 bounty. Still, the Texas feral hog population has swelled to about 2.5 million.

“At 85 mph, there’s not much time to react and those hogs are built solid,” said Guadalupe County Sheriff Arnold Zwicke, who shot three of the animals on his farm near Seguin this month, including a 300-pound sow. He said there have been four collisions with pigs on the new toll road since it opened in his county.